gerbh-

To scratch.

Derivatives include carve, crawl¹, and program.

1. carve, from Old English ceorfan, to cut, from Germanic *kerban.

2. kerf, from Old English cyrf, a cutting (off), from zero-grade Germanic form *kurbiz.

3. Variant form *grebh-.

a. crab¹, from Old English crabba, a crab, from Germanic *krab(b)-;

b. crayfish, from Old High German kerbiz, edible crustacean, from Germanic *krabiz-;

c. perhaps Germanic *krab-. crawl¹, from Old Norse krafla, to crawl.

4. Zero-grade form *gr̥bh-.

a. glamour, graffito, graft¹, gram¹, -gram, grammar, -graph, -grapher, graphic, -graphy; agrapha, agraphia, anagram, diagram, epigram, epigraph, graphite, iconography, paragraph, parallelogram, program, pseudepigrapha, Tetragrammaton, topography, from Greek graphein, to scratch, draw, write, gramma (< *gr̥bh-mn̥), a picture, written letter, piece of writing, and grammē, a line;

b. landgrave, margrave, palsgrave, from Middle Dutch grāve and Middle Low German grave, count, from West Germanic *grafa, a designation of rank, possibly borrowed from Greek grapheus, scribe.

 

[Pokorny gerebh- 392.]

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